Believing The Unbelievable

The hard part for me is believing in what is supposed to come after conversion to the faith. There is so much I do not understand. I also have questions about God that I still find no resolution for in scripture. It all bothers me. As one that likes things to flow, I am not finding that flow in my faith.

I do not really know what it means to live by the Spirit. I know what it means to live by the Word. Is it the same thing? Or is something supernatural supposed to be happening, or is it happening and I am just unaware of it? I can try to live by the rules and I do try, but I am unaware of any spiritual involvement in that process. I do not understand how it works. I feel no sense of direction coming from anything except myself and my own intellectual understanding of the scriptures.

And how does the Spirit change us? Why has it not changed me? Why do I still have to deal with the SSA that I have experienced since before my conversion? Why has God left me to twist in the wind with this? What is the point of such a struggle? If I received new life and freedom at my spiritual rebirth, should these things not have left me by now? I am almost 60 years old and I am still dealing with this crap. I came out in November of 2015 with the hope that this would finally free me. Confession is supposed to be good for the soul. It did help for awhile. I was released from pretending to be what I am not. That tension was gone and I know that my friends still love me, but the SSA is still there. It is not only there, but it is stronger than it was before. The battle rages. Why? Coming out may have been a bad choice in retrospect. It freed me from caring what people think about me. but it ratcheted up the desire.

Where is the promised freedom and the new life? Why has nothing changed?

I can only conclude that it does not work as promised. Natural inclinations can be controlled but not changed. 100% control is not possible and 100% change is not possible. All of this is as it has always been with me and I sense no spiritual involvement in the whole process as I fight.

Totally unrelated to this is what I see as the character of God in the Bible. He seems inconsistent to me as I read. John tells us God is love, that He loves us, that He wants to save us. Why did He not want to save anyone before the flood. If the book Genesis is to be believed, God is a genocidal maniac. He drowned the entire population of the world and to what end? Sin continued apace from the offspring of Noah's family. Purging the human race did nothing to end the reign of sin and death on earth. Even the death, burial and resurrection of His Son did not bring an end to the reign of sin and death. We still sin. We still die. But now there is this vague promise of life after death of which the Bible reveals little.

I know there are textbook answers to these kinds of questions, but they fall short in explaining why God does the things He does and is as He is portrayed in scripture and by evangelical leaders. I do not understand Him.

Accepting these kinds of things in faith in order to hear an explanation at a later, eternal date is hard. I would like to know now and be enabled to understand. Oddly, I have no trouble in believing in the resurrection, the possibility of a virgin birth or a six day creation. If God truly is God, these things should not present a problem. It's His behavioral inconsistencies that bother me. Is He the same and unchanging? The scriptures say so; they also reveal His changes of mind and attitude, as I read them. As I said, I do not understand.

I can only conclude that maybe things are not as I have been told all my life, that God is someone other than the One portrayed by Christian and Jewish teachers.

Lord, if you are reading, please enlighten me. I'm short on time and I would like some answers. Is that too much to ask? Have I pushed too much here? I need to know and understand. If you are really there, you would do this I think, right?